Tiny, imperceptibly flickering lights could provide a new way of sending data
to computers and mobile devices, researchers have claimed.

Dubbed ‘Li-Fi’, the technology aims to transmit internet communications via visible light. According to researchers led by a team from the University of Strathclyde, it could be possible to combine domestic lighting to also illuminate homes with the technology, which claims to offer high-definition film downloads in under a minute.

Existing data communications systems use already clogged-up microwave and radio waves, but Li-Fi uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which are rapidly gaining in popularity for standard lightbulbs and other domestic and commercial purposes. They are expected to be ubiquitous in 20 years.

Imperceptibly, LEDs already flicker on and off thousands of times a second and the Strathclyde researchers claim that by altering the length of the flickers, it is possible to send digital information to specially-adapted PCs and other electronic devices, making “Li-Fi the digital equivalent of Morse Code”. The team is working specifically on making each light just a micron in size. This would mean they could flicker faster and that 1million times more information could be communicated using the space of a conventional, 1mm-square LED used by other teams for Li-Fi.

As each micron-sized LED could also act like a pixel on a screen, the technology could also be used to display images.

Professor Martin Dawson, of Strathclyde, who is leading the four-year initiative, said “Imagine an LED array beside a motorway helping to light the road, displaying the latest traffic updates and transmitting internet information wirelessly to passengers’ laptops, netbooks and smartphones. This is the kind of extraordinary, energy-saving parallelism that we believe our pioneering technology could deliver.”

Researchers from Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and St Andrews universities are working with Strathclyde. Prof Dawson claimed the team was each “bringing specific expertise in complementary areas that will equip the consortium to tackle the many formidable challenges involved – in electronics, computing and materials, for instance – in making this vision a reality. This is technology that could start to touch every aspect of human life within a decade.”